e Floating
Debt--Return to the Old System--The Committee's Sane Conservatism--A
Sound Currency vital to National Recovery

XVII
MEETING THE WAR BILL
The Total War Debt--What are our Loans to the Allies worth?--Other
Uncertain Items--The Prospects of making Germany pay--The Right Way to
regard the Debt--Our Capital largely intact--A Reform of the Income
Tax--The Debt to America--The Levy on Capital and other Schemes--The
only Real Aids to Recovery

XVIII
THE REGULATION OF THE CURRENCY
Macaulay on Depreciated Currency--Its Evils To-day--The Plight of the
Rentier--Mr Goodenough's Suggestion--Sir Edward Holden's Criticisms of
the Currency Committee--His Scheme of Reform--Two Departments or One in
the Bank of England?--Not a Vital Question--The Ratio of Notes to
Gold--Objections to a Hard-and-fast Ratio--The Limit on Note Issues--The
Federal Reserve Act and American Optimism--Currency and Commercial
Paper--A Central Gold Reserve with Central Control

XIX
TIGHTENING THE FETTERS OF FINANCE
The New Meaning of Licence--The Question of Capital Issues--Text of the
Treasury Regulations--Their Scope and Effect--The Position of the Stock
Exchange--Wider Issues at Stake--Should Capital be set Free?--The
Arguments for and against--Perils of an Excessive Caution--The New
Committee and its Terms of Reference--The Absurdity of prohibiting
Share-splitting--The Storm in the House of Commons--Disappearance of the
Retrospective Clause--A Sample of Bureaucratic Stupidity

XX
MONEY OR GOODS?
"Boundless Wealth"--Money and the Volume of Trade--The Quantity
Theory--The Gold Standard--How is the Volume of Paper to be
regulated?--Mr Kitson's Ideal

INDEX

WAR-TIME FINANCIAL PROBLEMS

I

THE OUTLOOK FOR CAPITAL

_September_, 1917

The Creation of Capital--The Inducement--War and Capital

One of the questions that are now most keenly agitating the minds of
the investing public and of financiers who cater for its wants, and
also of employers and organisers of industry who are trying to see
their way into after-the-war conditions, is that of the supply of
capital. On this subject there are two contradictory theories: one
considers that owing to the destruction of capital during the war,
capital will be for many years at a famine price; the other, that
owing to the exhaustion of all the warring powers, that is, of the
greater part of the civilised world, the spirit of enterprise will be
almost dead, the demand for capi